IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF ARIZONA

Appellant Vladimir Gagic’s Opening Brief

Appeal from the Decision and Order Imposing Sanctions
of the Hearing Panel, filed May 14, 2026

Table of Contents

Table of Authorities

Jurisdictional Statement

This Court has exclusive authority over attorney discipline in Arizona under Rule 31(a), Ariz. R. Sup. Ct., and hears appeals from hearing panel decisions under Rule 59, Ariz. R. Sup. Ct. The Hearing Panel disbarred me on May 14, 2026, in PDJ 2025-9084 (State Bar Nos. 24-0041 and 25-1216). I timely appealed under Rule 59(a). This is my opening brief under Rule 59(g).

Statement of the Case

The State Bar filed a two-count Complaint against me on December 10, 2025. Count One charged violations of Rule 41(b)(3), (b)(5), and (b)(7) and Rule 42, ER 8.2(a) and ER 8.4(d), Ariz. R. Sup. Ct., and arose from social-media posts I made about Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell and her fiancé, Paul Stout, and from my conduct in a related injunction proceeding, Stout v. Gagic, Maricopa County Superior Court No. CV2024-022841. Count Two charged violations of Rule 41(b)(3) and (b)(7) and Rule 42, ER 8.2(a) and ER 8.4(c), and arose from a video I posted about a Superior Court judge 3 years ago, which the Complaint alleged had been altered.

I answered on December 15, 2025, and the next day moved to dismiss under Arizona’s anti-SLAPP statute, A.R.S. § 12-751, arguing this proceeding was retaliation for protected criticism of an elected official. On January 7, 2026, the PDJ denied the motion on a pretext, without reaching the retaliation question. Two days later she denied all seven of my requests for subpoenas duces tecum — including to Mitchell — holding that no rule permits a respondent to obtain one, because Rule 48(b), Ariz. R. Sup. Ct., does not incorporate Rule 45, Ariz. R. Civ. P. The State Bar had not opposed the requests.

At the Final Case Management Conference on April 7, 2026, the PDJ struck my Answer in its entirety under Rule 58(f)(3), Ariz. R. Sup. Ct., and barred me from offering any opposition, witness, or evidence on either count. That ruling deemed every allegation in the Complaint admitted — including the allegation that I made statements I knew to be false or made with reckless disregard for their truth, which is the state-of-mind element of ER 8.2(a). The Hearing Panel disbarred me on May 14, 2026. It never reached my retaliation defense. I timely appealed.

Statement of Facts

I have practiced law in Arizona since 2002. In December 2022, a hearing panel suspended me for one year and Brutinel, not the entire court as required, solely affirmed it in May 2023. And despite what Henley says, Brutinel’s order still does not appear publicly on the Supreme Court website, Lexis, Westlaw, Google Scholar, etc. I did not get a hearing on merits in the 2022 case, making me the only lawyer in American history to be denied a hearing on the merits on multiple occasions.

Beginning in mid-2024, I used my personal social-media accounts to criticize Mitchell’s office over its prosecution of my former client, Jamaal Pennington, and to criticize her now husband, Paul Stout, who claimed to be a former Department of Child Safety employee.

On July 7, 2024, Mitchell submitted a charge against me to the State Bar through its online intake system. She states that she has “never met” me. She gives her reason for writing: “he has been repeatedly criticizing me on X.” And she states the result she wanted: my conduct was “so beyond the pale” that “he needs to be disbarred.”

Sworn testimony corroborated the coordination before the Complaint existed. On August 22, 2024, Stout falsely presented his petition ex parte as his own work: “I’m not in the legal business and I apologize, but I did the best I could researching this.” Tr., Stout v. Gagic, CV2024-022841 (Aug. 22, 2024). At the contested hearing on September 16, 2024, however, he admitted under oath that he had posted about me anonymously as “azjaypaul” and “az1patriot,” and, asked who wrote the petition: “Rachel Mitchell and myself, we wrote it on our time” — “the chief prosecutor of the county,” the next question confirmed, “That’s correct.” Tr. (Sept. 16, 2024) at 49-50. When I pressed the contradiction, the court sustained objections and ruled the co-authorship “irrelevant.” Id. at 50-51.

The same court had already denied my motion to dismiss under A.R.S. § 12-751 from the bench, ruling the statute “does not apply to this ... proceeding.” Id. at 3-4. Mitchell personally contacted the State Bar seeking my disbarment, and Phoenix Police referred a related criminal investigation of me to the Attorney General because of “conflicts at the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office.” Maricopa County Prosecutor’s Online Troll Investigation, Phoenix New Times (2025). Mitchell personally lobbied both the assistant chief of Phoenix police and the US Attorney to prosecute me. Stout told police he planned on suing me civilly after my prosecution and police originally submitted the charges to MCAO despite the glaring conflict. Most telling, on February 14, 2025, Mitchell falsely accused me of mailing her dog feces and she told Phoenix police, on BWC, that my disbarment was a mere formality: “he is going to be disbarred” even though proceedings were in the preliminary stage. She also revealed to Phoenix police extensive private details about me and my family suggesting that she had me under surveillance.

Federal law enforcement examined the same posts, and its records — produced to me in ongoing FOIA litigation, Gagic v. FBI, No. 1:25-cv-2571 (D.D.C.) — document how that examination began and ended. The FBI’s Phoenix field office opened a file captioned “Vladimir Gagic, Online Stalking.” Its opening “Summary of Predication” declared the investigation “initiated based on articulable facts that Vladimir Gagic (Gagic) has committed federal crimes and poses a threat to national security” by “targeting government employees and law enforcement officials on social media platforms,” in violation of the federal stalking statute, 18 U.S.C. § 2261A(2).

That was the federal government’s opening characterization of a suspended lawyer’s posts criticizing public officials: federal crimes, and a threat to national security. On August 23, 2024 — six weeks after Mitchell’s charge submission — an FBI Special Agent accompanied three Maricopa County Sheriff’s deputies to my home to serve the civil Injunction Against Harassment that Mitchell’s fiancé had obtained, and, per the agent’s own FD-302 report, “provided a copy of the federal statute for Stalking explaining that should GAGIC violate the Injunction Against Harassment, the FBI could seek federal stalking charges.”

Three pages of the file are withheld in full under FOIA Exemption 7(D), which protects a confidential source’s identity and information. The FBI’s November 1, 2024 Guardian intake noted that agents “will likely look to interview and admonish the subject.” On December 18, 2024, the United States Attorney for the District of Arizona declined prosecution in a letter to the FBI. The letter explained there was no “reasonable likelihood of conviction at trial,” because of “the nature of the speech relating to a public figure running for office close in time to the online posts.” On March 28, 2025, the FBI closed its file: “No potential criminal violations or priority threats to national security warranting further investigation were identified.”

The investigation that began by declaring me a national-security threat ended by finding none — and ended with no crime, no charge, and a written acknowledgment that the First Amendment protected the speech.

My criticism of Mitchell’s office was not baseless. Of the multiple felony counts the State originally charged against Pennington, only one remains. All the sex trafficking charges for which I was de facto disbarred are gone. State v. Pennington, No. 1 CA-CR 24-0092 (Ariz. Ct. App. Dec. 20, 2024) (mem. decision).

Issues Presented for Review

1. Whether retaliation for my protected criticism of an elected official substantially motivated this proceeding, where the official personally asked the State Bar to disbar me because, in her words, “he has been repeatedly criticizing me on X,” and the PDJ denied my anti-SLAPP motion without ever reaching that question.
2. Whether the denial of every discovery request I made, followed by the striking of my entire Answer, denied me due process, where the same PDJ in a contemporaneous case, In the Matter of a Member of the State Bar of Arizona (Gingras), PDJ 2026-9010, allowed another respondent to obtain subpoenas duces tecum and ordered full merits briefing on the identical anti-SLAPP question she refused to reach in my case.
3. Whether due process permits a disciplinary tribunal to deny a respondent’s request for discovery on the ground that he has not filed an initial disclosure statement, where filing that statement would have waived his objection to the denial of that same discovery, and where his failure to file it was then made a ground for striking his Answer in full.

Standard of Review

This Court reviews questions of law de novo and findings of fact for clear error. Rule 59(j), Ariz. R. Sup. Ct. Whether I received due process, and whether the sanction imposed was proportionate, are questions this Court reviews de novo. This Court is “not bound by the panel’s recommendation” and independently determines the sanction the record warrants. In re Scholl, 200 Ariz. 222, 224 (2001); In re Alcorn, 202 Ariz. 62, 75 (2002).

Summary of Argument

I was singled out. That is the argument of this brief, and the record below proves it. An elected prosecutor asked the State Bar to take my law license because I criticized her online. She said so in writing. She had never met me. She identified no client, no case, and no courtroom — only my posts on X. Seventeen months later the State Bar charged me. Five months after that I was disbarred, without a hearing on the merits, and no Arizona lawyer before me disciplined for social-media posts ever.

Federal law enforcement saw these same posts first, and its file traces the full arc of what a government can do to a critic before any tribunal checks it. The FBI opened an investigation declaring, in its Summary of Predication, that I had “committed federal crimes and pose[d] a threat to national security.” An agent came to my home. Then the United States Attorney for Arizona declined to prosecute, in writing, identifying “[n]o potential criminal violations or priority threats to national security.” Federal crimes and a national-security threat at the opening; protected speech, no crime, and no threat at the close. Every authority that actually analyzed this speech declined to punish it. The one authority that never analyzed it took my license.

I raised that retaliation the day after I answered, in a motion to dismiss under Arizona’s anti-SLAPP statute. The PDJ never reached it. She denied the motion on an optional affidavit technicality, then denied every subpoena I sought — including to Mitchell — on the categorical ground that no respondent may ever obtain one, then quashed Mitchell’s deposition as “inappropriate” on grounds neither party had briefed, then struck my entire Answer over discovery disputes that had nothing to do with whether anything I said was false. Each ruling closed one door. Together they left no way to prove the only defense that mattered.

The disclosure statement I did not file was the hinge, and it was a trap. Filing it would have certified that my case was complete after the tribunal had denied me every means of completing it, letting the Bar argue I had accepted the discovery I got and abandoned my objection to what I was refused. I said exactly that, in writing, before any sanction issued. The PDJ then closed the circle: she denied my request for the discovery I had been refused “[g]iven that Initial Disclosure has not been filed,” and its absence then became a ground for striking my Answer. Discovery required the disclosure; the disclosure would have waived the objection to being denied discovery. There was no exit.

The subpoena ruling shows what this was. She denied all seven of my requests on the ground that no rule lets a respondent obtain a subpoena duces tecum at all — three weeks after the State Bar used Rule 47(h) to obtain a subpoena against me in this same case, and six weeks before her own Disciplinary Clerk issued subpoenas duces tecum to the respondent in Gingras, which she then adjudicated under Rule 47(h)(3) and the very civil rule she told me was not incorporated. The rule she said did not exist existed for the State Bar in December and for Mr. Gingras in February — just not for me in January.

The pattern holds across every question. In Gingras she called the anti-SLAPP issue one of “first impression” and ordered full merits briefing — the briefing she refused me four months earlier without a word of analysis. The State Bar filed its brief in his case on May 15, 2026, the day after she disbarred me for raising the identical question.

By April 15, 2026, every structure through which a respondent contests a charge had been removed: the pleadings (my Answer, struck), the evidence (discovery, denied categorically), the witnesses (all barred), my own testimony (conditioned on a deposition ordered after liability had already closed), and the hearing itself (two days, reduced to two hours and forty-five minutes). The Decision records that the PDJ had already made up her mind by having “reflected her inclination for ruling” on the dispositive motions before the conference at which she ruled. Decision at 2. What remained was the outcome Mitchell had requested in writing twenty-two months earlier — the form of adjudication, after every working part had been removed.

This Court should vacate the disbarment and order the Complaint dismissed.

Argument

I Was Singled Out. An Elected Prosecutor Demanded My Disbarment for Criticizing Her, Every Ruling Below Went Her Way on Grounds Applied to No One Else, and the Same Judge Gave Another Respondent Everything She Refused Me.

A. Mitchell asked the State Bar to disbar me because I criticized her, and she said so in her own words.

Mitchell’s July 7, 2024 charge is the origin of this case. She wrote it herself. In it, she identifies herself by office — “the elected Maricopa County Attorney” — states that she has “never met” me, explains that “he has been repeatedly criticizing me on X,” and asks the Bar to act because my conduct was “so beyond the pale” that “he needs to be disbarred.” The State Bar’s own staff sent me that document on November 15, 2024, under the same file number, 24-0041, that became Count One.

Nothing in that charge identifies a client I harmed, a tribunal I obstructed, or a matter I was handling. It identifies criticism of a public official, and it asks for the maximum professional sanction in response. And Stout’s September 2024 sworn testimony — anonymous accounts attacking Mitchell’s critics, a petition written by “Rachel Mitchell and myself” — confirms a coordinated response to criticism, not a disinterested report of misconduct. All of it predates the Complaint.

Criticism of an elected prosecutor’s conduct in office is core political speech. ER 8.2(a) reaches only statements a lawyer “knows to be false or [makes] with reckless disregard as to [their] truth or falsity” — the actual-malice standard that governs speech about public officials. Garrison v. Louisiana, 379 U.S. 64, 74-75 (1964); New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254, 279-80 (1964). Lawyers do not forfeit that protection at admission, and courts scrutinize discipline for attorney speech about public officials, especially speech outside any client representation. Gentile v. State Bar of Nevada, 501 U.S. 1030, 1054-56 (1991) (plurality); Standing Comm. on Discipline v. Yagman, 55 F.3d 1430, 1438-42 (9th Cir. 1995) (vacating discipline where the record did not establish knowledge of falsity or reckless disregard).

Last month the Florida Supreme Court held that applying that state’s identical rule to a lawyer’s criticism of an elected prosecutor violated the First Amendment, because “political speech ... is deserving of the highest level of First Amendment protection.” The Florida Bar v. Crowley, No. SC2020-0529, at 1 (Fla. July 9, 2026). Nor does tone strip speech of that character: “the inappropriate or controversial character of a statement is irrelevant to the question whether it deals with a matter of public concern.” Hernandez v. City of Phoenix, 43 F.4th 966 (9th Cir. 2022) (public-employee posts). The Panel’s aggravation findings rest on the tone of my posts, not the falsity of anything in them — a motive “to taunt, bully or for personal entertainment.” Decision at 29. Criticism of an elected prosecutor does not stop being criticism of an elected prosecutor because it is allegedly delivered rudely.

The federal government tested this same speech against the criminal law and the Constitution, and walked away. By December 18, 2024 — almost a year before the State Bar filed its Complaint — the United States Attorney for the District of Arizona had reviewed my posts and declined prosecution. By March 28, 2025, the FBI had closed its file. Federal prosecutors performed exactly the analysis ER 8.2(a) and the First Amendment required below — public figure, no threat, protected though offensive — and it defeated the case. The disciplinary proceeding is the one forum that never performed that analysis, and the one that imposed the maximum penalty.

Weeks after the declination, Mitchell was still writing the case agents — “over 100 posts on his X account — it’s hard to keep track!” — and arranging a status meeting with an Assistant United States Attorney. FBI(25-cv-2571)-346, -349. The search for an authority willing to act on this speech continued after the Department of Justice said no — and succeeded only in the one tribunal that declined to examine it.

The chain from her request to my disbarment runs unbroken, and every link is dated. July 7, 2024: Mitchell submits her charge — “he needs to be disbarred.” August 23, 2024: an FBI agent and three sheriff’s deputies arrive at my home to serve the civil injunction her fiancé obtained, and the agent hands me the federal stalking statute, explaining the FBI “could seek federal stalking charges” should I violate it. September 16, 2024: Stout admits under oath that he ran the anonymous accounts and that “Rachel Mitchell and myself” wrote the petition; the court rules the co-authorship “irrelevant” and holds that ARS section 12-751 “does not apply” to the proceeding. November 15, 2024: the State Bar’s staff sends me that charge under File No. 24-0041. December 18, 2024: the United States Attorney for Arizona declines prosecution over the same posts. The FBI closes its file, identifying no potential criminal violations and no threats to national security. December 10, 2025: the Bar files its Complaint under that same file number. December 16, 2025: I move to dismiss the proceeding as retaliation. January 7, 2026: the motion is denied without reaching that question, and Mitchell’s deposition is vacated on grounds no party briefed. January 9, 2026: all seven of my subpoena requests are denied as categorically unavailable to respondents. April 7, 2026: my Answer is struck in its entirety. April 15, 2026: what was set as a two-day evidentiary hearing proceeds as two hours and forty-five minutes of aggravation and mitigation. May 14, 2026: disbarment, effective immediately. May 15, 2026: the State Bar files its brief, in another lawyer’s case, on the question it never had to answer in mine. In those twenty-two months, no tribunal ever tested whether a single statement I made was false — or why this proceeding existed at all.

B. The PDJ refused to reach the retaliation question, then removed every means of proving it.

I moved to dismiss under A.R.S. § 12-751 on December 16, 2025 — one day after answering. The PDJ denied the motion on January 7, 2026 because I had not submitted an optional affidavit. She did not decide whether the statute applies to attorney discipline, whether my speech was protected, or whether retaliation motivated the charges. She did not order briefing. She did not permit me to cure.

Two days later she denied all seven of my subpoena requests at once. She did not reach whether the documents I sought were relevant, or whether the requests were made in good faith; the order says she saw “additional issues” but “does not proceed with additional analysis.” She denied them on a single categorical ground: “the PDJ is unaware of any rule applicable to the disciplinary proceedings that provides a Respondent the ability to request the PDJ issue a subpoena duces tecum.” Order: Pending Motions for Subpoena Duces Tecum, PDJ 2025-9084 (Jan. 9, 2026).

That sentence decides nothing about my seven motions. It decides something about respondents as a class. The State Bar had filed nothing against them — the order records that it “has not provided a timely response to any of the motions.” And no disclosure default could have justified the denials, because there was none: under Rule 58(e), Ariz. R. Sup. Ct., as the PDJ’s own ICMC order recites, my Initial Disclosure Statement was not due until thirty days after my December 15, 2025 Answer. I filed the subpoena motions on December 19 and 22 — within a week of answering — and they were denied on January 9, before any disclosure statement was due from me at all.

The order reasons from Rule 48(b), Ariz. R. Sup. Ct., which lists the civil rules applicable in disciplinary proceedings and omits Rule 45, Ariz. R. Civ. P. But Rule 48(b) is a list of borrowed civil rules. It is not the source of subpoena power in disciplinary cases. Rule 47(h) is, and its text answers the January 9 order directly: “the disciplinary clerk shall have the power to issue subpoenas,” and “[a]fter filing of a complaint, the parties may prepare subpoenas as needed in the form set forth in paragraph (i) of this rule and file the subpoenas with the disciplinary clerk.” Rule 47(h), (h)(2), Ariz. R. Sup. Ct. The parties. And the paragraph (i) form the rule prescribes is for subpoenas commanding “the attendance of witnesses and the production of books and records” — a subpoena duces tecum. Where the drafters meant one-sided power, they said so: (h)(1), pre-complaint investigative subpoenas, runs to “the state bar” alone and requires a statement of facts; (h)(2), after a complaint, runs to the parties and requires nothing but the form. Three weeks before the January 9 order, the State Bar invoked Rule 47(h) to obtain a subpoena in this very case, to compel my own attendance. The order never mentions the rule.

December 19 shows how the machinery moved when the State Bar was asking. The Clerk issued the Bar’s deposition subpoena that day, “[b]y order of the Honorable Lisa A. VandenBerg ... pursuant to Rule 47(h).” The same day PDJ issued an ex parte amended subpoena — conforming the deposition time to a second same-day request from Bar counsel, and adding my residential address, which appears in neither of the Bar’s two filed requests. By 7:10 that evening, a rush-retained process server was at my home. Two subpoenas requested, issued, amended, and out for night service at my house, in a single day, under the rule the January 9 order would not name.

That is the asymmetry, and it was built in at the threshold. The prosecuting authority in this case had a subpoena rule and used it, at same-day speed. I was told no rule existed. And the subpoena the Bar obtained was one it did not even need: I was a party, whose deposition attendance a notice alone compels under Rule 30, Ariz. R. Civ. P. The subpoenas I was denied ran to non-parties — Mitchell, her office, the police, X Corp. — who could be reached no other way. One side got a subpoena it did not need; the other was denied the only subpoenas that could matter. Nothing in Rule 47(h) says that. And when a ruling’s every stated ground is contradicted by the rule’s own text and by the issuing office’s own contemporaneous acts, the settled inference is that the stated grounds were not the real ones.

The Mitchell deposition removes any doubt about what Rule 47(h) permits. On December 24, 2025, the Disciplinary Clerk issued my subpoena compelling Rachel Mitchell to appear for deposition on January 9, 2026, over the same legend the Bar’s subpoena carried: “By order of the Honorable Lisa A. VandenBerg, Presiding Disciplinary Judge of the Supreme Court of Arizona, pursuant to Rule 47(h), Ariz. R. Sup. Ct.” A respondent-requested subpoena, issued in this very case, under the very rule the January 9 order would not name. Sixteen days later, that order declared the PDJ “unaware of any rule” by which a respondent could obtain a subpoena duces tecum — without mentioning that her own Clerk had just issued me a Rule 47(h) subpoena, or that Rule 47(h) is the rule under which she would adjudicate a respondent’s subpoenas duces tecum in Gingras two months later. Nor can the denial be recast as a wrong-vehicle ruling. The order did not tell me to present subpoenas to the Clerk rather than move for issuance; it said no rule existed at all — days after the Clerk issued my Mitchell subpoena, and two years after issuing Mr. Blehm’s on filings captioned, precisely, requests to issue.

On January 7, 2026, the PDJ quashed that Mitchell deposition with no exposition beyond “inappropriate,” set for January 9, in its entirety. The State Bar’s only filing on the subject disputed the deposition’s location and length; it never argued that deposing Mitchell was improper. The PDJ vacated the deposition outright on grounds neither party had briefed — that the proceeding was not “an appropriate forum” for non-parties, and that I had not complied with Rules 26(f), 30(a)(1), and 30(b)(3)(B), Ariz. R. Civ. P. Order (ICMC Scheduling Order and Order Quashing Subpoena and Vacating Deposition Regarding Rachel Mitchell), PDJ 2025-9084, at 8 (Jan. 7, 2026).

The result was a closed circuit. My motion failed for want of evidence. The evidence was in Mitchell’s and the Bar’s possession. Every mechanism for reaching it was denied on threshold grounds that had nothing to do with whether my requests were made in good faith.

C. The same judge gave another respondent, in the same posture, everything she denied me.

I ask this Court to take judicial notice under Rule 201, Ariz. R. Evid., of the record in In the Matter of a Member of the State Bar of Arizona (Gingras), PDJ 2026-9010, a contemporaneous proceeding before the same PDJ.

Mr. Gingras is charged under ER 8.2(a) for public statements about a sitting judge — the same rule, for the same kind of speech about a public official. He moved to dismiss under A.R.S. § 12-751, the same statute I invoked. The PDJ did not deny his motion summarily. By order of April 30, 2026, she found that “the requested application of [A.R.S. §] 12-751 in Arizona attorney discipline” is “a case of first impression” and ordered full merits briefing, due May 21, 2026. Order (Briefing Re: Motion to Dismiss), PDJ 2026-9010, at 1-2 (Apr. 30, 2026). The State Bar briefed the question on May 15, 2026 — the day after she disbarred me.

Then there are the subpoenas. Six weeks after telling me that no rule permits a Respondent to obtain a subpoena duces tecum, this PDJ’s own Disciplinary Clerk issued one to a Respondent. On February 23, 2026, Mr. Gingras “electronically presented for issuance a Subpoena Duces Tecum ... directly to the Disciplinary Clerk,” and “[t]he Disciplinary Clerk issued said Subpoena Duces Tecum on February 23, 2026.” Order re Motion to Quash/Motion to Compel Subpoena Duces Tecum Involving Non-Party Harry Howe, PDJ 2026-9010 (Apr. 17, 2026). No order told him no rule allowed it.

The PDJ then adjudicated the objections to those subpoenas on their merits. Ruling on March 11, 2026 on a motion to quash portions of Mr. Gingras’s subpoena duces tecum, she found the motion “timely, pursuant to Rule 47(h)(3), Ariz. R. Sup. Ct.,” and then applied Rule 45(e)(2)(A)(iii) and Rule 45(e)(2)(B)(iv), Ariz. R. Civ. P., to decide which portions to quash and which to enforce. Order to Quash Portions of Subpoena Duces Tecum, PDJ 2026-9010 (Mar. 11, 2026).

Both premises of the January 9 order fail against that ruling. Rule 47(h) does reach subpoenas duces tecum in disciplinary proceedings — the PDJ applied its subsection (3) to one. And Rule 45, Ariz. R. Civ. P., the rule she told me was “not included in the civil rules incorporated into disciplinary proceedings,” is the rule she used to resolve a respondent’s subpoena dispute eight weeks later.

The Blehm subpoenas show how simple this process is for every respondent but me. On February 16, 2024, Mr. Blehm filed a one-sentence “Request to Issue Subpoenas” asking that subpoenas duces tecum issue to Runbeck Election Services, the Maricopa County Elections Department, and the Administrative Office of the Courts. The request cited no rule — not Rule 47(h), not Rule 45, nothing. The Disciplinary Clerk issued the subpoenas the same day, each over the legend “By order of the Presiding Disciplinary Judge of the Supreme Court of Arizona.” On March 8, 2024, he filed a second one-sentence request — this time including a subpoena duces tecum to the Custodian of Records of the Arizona Supreme Court itself — and those issued the same day as well. And the sequence in his file answers, in advance, the rationale later used against me. Mr. Blehm’s first subpoenas issued February 16, 2024. Ten days later, on February 26, his own signed motion told the tribunal he was still “currently working on his document and witness disclosure” — no disclosure statement had been served when his subpoenas issued — and his second set issued March 8 all the same. Motion to Elevate to Tier 3, PDJ 2023-9096, at 2 (Feb. 26, 2024).

When objections came, including from the Administrative Office of the Courts, they were briefed and resolved on their merits, not answered by erasing the power. Order re Objection to Subpoena Duces Tecum Served on the AOC, PDJ 2023-9096 (Mar. 6, 2024). Two years later, my request for discovery was denied in one sentence: “[g]iven that Initial Disclosure has not been filed.” The same office that issued a respondent’s subpoenas while his disclosure was, in his own words, still being worked on made the absence of mine the reason I could have no discovery at all. A respondent facing election-litigation charges commanded records from this Court’s own custodian by asking in a single sentence. Mr. Blehm’s case proceeded before a different PDJ, but the January 9, 2026 order in mine did not deny my motions as an exercise of one judge’s discretion. It declared that no rule gives any respondent the ability — a proposition the same Clerk’s office had been disproving in practice, same-day, on one-sentence requests.

None of this was hidden from the PDJ. On March 31, 2026 — a week before she struck my Answer — I attached to my Opposition, as Exhibits A through E, copies of subpoenas duces tecum her own office had issued to other respondents: four to Mr. Blehm in PDJ 2023-9096 and one to Mr. Gingras in PDJ 2026-9010. I told her, in that filing, that respondents plainly do get subpoenas duces tecum in Arizona disciplinary proceedings, and I attached the proof. The April 8 order does not mention those exhibits. No order below does.

She did raise the Rule 45 and Rule 48 question with Mr. Gingras — but as an open one, asking him to “identify the legal authority that he relies on” for the PDJ’s “edification,” while leaving his subpoena power intact and expressly inviting him to serve “a substantially similar Subpoena Duces Tecum.” Howe Order, supra. That is how a fair and impartial tribunal treats an unsettled question. Six weeks earlier she had treated the same question as closed against me, in one sentence, without asking for authority, without briefing, and without any opportunity to cure.

Same statute. Same rule of professional conduct. Same category of speech about a public official. Same judge, in the same months. Mr. Gingras got issuance, merits rulings, an invitation to refile, and briefing on a question of first impression. I got a categorical no on every one of those things, and then the maximum sanction. No rule produced that difference. No order below acknowledges it, let alone justifies it.

This disparity reflects, among other things, discrimination on the basis of national origin. In my March 31, 2026 Opposition I argued that the State Bar and the PDJ had extended to Mr. Blehm and Mr. Gingras procedural rights they refused me, and that the line between us tracked something other than the rules. Opposition at 8-9. Henley made the discrimination explicit during the aggravation hearing when he stated that the proposition “In Serbian culture, directness and boldness in speech are not only common — they are expected. This cultural style, while passionate, is not meant to offend or disrespect” is false, thereby justifying my disbarment. Neither PDJ nor the other panel members raised an eyebrow at Henley using my ethnicity as evidence to justify my disbarment.

The governing principle is long settled: a law or rule fair on its face still violates equal protection when it is “applied and administered by public authority with an evil eye and an unequal hand, so as practically to make unjust and illegal discriminations between persons in similar circumstances.” Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356, 373-74 (1886).

I state plainly what this record does and does not contain. It contains documented disparate treatment: subpoenas issued to two other respondents and categorically refused to me; merits briefing ordered for a respondent raising the identical statute and refused to me; a sanction with no Arizona comparator. It does not contain evidence establishing the reason for the disparity, because I was never permitted to develop any. Yick Wo turned on a fully developed record; I was denied every mechanism for building one — no subpoena, no deposition, no hearing at which the question could be reached.

A respondent cannot be denied all discovery into how a licensing authority selects its targets, then be met with the objection that he has no evidence of how it selects them. Whether the disparity is explained by my speech, the official who demanded my disbarment, my national origin, or some combination, is a question the orders below made unanswerable — and that is a reason the judgment cannot stand, not a reason to excuse it: a tribunal that removes every instrument for testing its own evenhandedness forfeits the presumption of regularity. The disparity is proven. The innocent explanation was the State Bar’s to supply, and it supplied none.

On June 22, 2026 — five weeks after my disbarment — the PDJ finally decided the question, denying Mr. Gingras’s motion in a fifteen-page reasoned order. That order proves the comparison rather than dissolving it. Both respondents lost the same motion. One lost it after his motion was accepted and both sides briefed the question, in a reasoned first-impression analysis — with an express invitation to seek this Court’s review by special action and a pause of his case to permit it. Mr. Gingras filed that petition on July 22, 2026; it is pending before this Court; and on July 28, 2026 the PDJ suspended his entire procedural schedule “until ... the Court’s final determination on the Petition.” Order (Continue Suspension of Procedural Schedule), PDJ 2026-9010 (July 28, 2026). His whole case stands still while this Court decides the question. Mine was never paused for anything; I was disbarred five weeks before the reasoning existed.

The Gingras June 22 order describes my motion in a footnote: “The PDJ has only received one previous motion attempting to rely upon this Statute. However, the previous motion did not meet the basic procedural requirements and was summarily dismissed.” Order re: Motion to Dismiss, PDJ 2026-9010, at 6 n.10 (June 22, 2026). Summarily is her word — and the “basic procedural requirements” she invoked do not exist. She never even read it. She never read anything I wrote, which is why PDJ said she did not know who Blehm even was even though my pleadings were full of mentions and screen shots of his posts: “I already told you I don’t know who that is”. She said she did not know who Gingras is either even though the day before she said that, she and Henley both had a 20 minute hearing with Gingras. Section 12-751(B) permits prima facie proof by “evidence based on the record, a sworn affidavit or other evidence”: disjunctive and permissive. An affidavit is one optional route to proof, not a filing requirement; Mr. Gingras’s affidavit was his chosen evidence, not compliance I omitted. And the statute’s first listed route — “evidence based on the record” — required no affidavit at all: the Complaint itself captions Count One “File No. 24-0041/Stout and Mitchell,” and the conduct it charges under that caption is my criticism of Mitchell — the very criticism she described in that charge as “he has been repeatedly criticizing me on X,” conduct she called grounds why “he needs to be disbarred.”

On its face, the record showed a proceeding brought on the charge file of the public official whose criticism was the charged conduct. The prima facie predicate sat in the record; the PDJ demanded instead the one form of proof the statute makes optional. The January 7 order converted an optional form of proof into a mandatory formality; the June 22 footnote recast that error as my default. The question is now before this Court — reached in Gingras by process, and in mine by a requirement the statute nowhere contains.

There is one variable in this record that distinguishes my case from his, and it is not a legal one. The person who complained about me is the elected Maricopa County Attorney, and she ordered the State Bar in writing to disbar me. She even told Phoenix Police it was a done deal. Everything after that request went her way. The rulings below then made that variable the one thing I was not permitted to examine — no subpoena to her, no deposition of her, no hearing at which any of it could be raised.

D. Before any sanction issued I explained in writing why I would not file a disclosure statement or sit for a deposition. The PDJ then denied my discovery for the very reason I had given, and never answered the other.

By March 2026 the position I was in was this. The PDJ had denied all seven of my subpoena requests on the ground that no respondent may ever obtain one. She had vacated Mitchell’s deposition. The State Bar, meanwhile, had its subpoena, its deposition of me, and the full record of its own investigation. An initial disclosure statement is a party’s certification of the witnesses and evidence it will rely on. Filing one in that posture would have told the tribunal that my case was complete — when the reason it was not complete was that the tribunal had refused me every means of completing it. The State Bar would then have been free to argue that by participating in the disclosure process I had accepted the discovery I was given and abandoned my objection to what I was denied.

I put that concern in writing, to the PDJ, before any sanction issued. In my March 31, 2026 Opposition to the State Bar’s Renewed Motion to Compel, I described the choice as a “lose-lose dilemma”: if I filed the disclosure statement, the Bar “would immediately argue that I had waived any and all objections to the due-process violations that denied me reciprocal discovery, depositions, and subpoenas”; and if I did not, the Bar would say I was in “open refusal” and demand “the nuclear sanction of striking my Answer.” Opposition at 5. I asked the obvious question directly: “Why would I file a disclosure statement when the PDJ and SBA have denied me any right to depose witnesses or subpoena evidence? It would only create the false appearance of a level playing field that does not exist.” Id. at 7.

The PDJ closed the circle herself. On page 11 of that same filing, I asked her to order reciprocal discovery — the Mitchell deposition and the subpoenas duces tecum I had been denied. Her April 8, 2026 order disposed of that request in one sentence: “Given that Initial Disclosure has not been filed by Mr. Gagic, IT IS ORDERED denying Mr. Gagic’s request for relief on page 11 of the Response.” Order (Final Case Management Conference), PDJ 2025-9084, at 4 (Apr. 8, 2026). So my request for discovery was denied because I had not filed a disclosure statement, and the absence of that disclosure statement then became a stated ground for striking my Answer. The only exit from the loop was the one filing that would have conceded the point. And the loop ran in reverse order: my subpoenas were requested and denied in December and January, before my disclosure statement was even due. The disclosure default that later became the reason I could have no discovery did not exist when my discovery was denied.

The Supreme Court has described attorney discipline as “adversary proceedings of a quasi-criminal nature” and warned that such proceedings “become a trap when, after they are underway, the charges are amended on the basis of testimony of the accused.” In re Ruffalo, 390 U.S. 544, 551 (1968). The trap here took a different form than the one in Ruffalo — not a charge amended mid-proceeding, but a procedural loop in which the only path to discovery ran through a filing that would have waived the objection to its denial. The principle is the same. Due process does not permit a disciplinary tribunal to structure a proceeding so that every course open to the respondent forfeits a right.

No order below engages the reason I gave. The April 8 order denies my request in a single sentence, and the ground it recites is the very conduct my filing had just explained. The State Bar bore the burden of proving its charges by clear and convincing evidence. I had no obligation to help it carry that burden, and certainly no obligation to purchase discovery with a waiver.

My deposition was the same problem in a sharper form. The deposition ordered for April 10, 2026 could not have affected the outcome of this case, because the outcome was already fixed. In the same order that set it, the PDJ struck my Answer in its entirety, deemed every allegation of the Complaint admitted, accepted the State Bar’s unilateral pre-hearing statement, and reset the April 15 hearing to proceed as “an in-person ONLY Aggravation and Mitigation hearing.” FCMC Order at 4. Liability was closed. The order directed me to appear “regarding the Complaint filed December 10, 2025, including aggravation and mitigation factors as described by the American Bar Association Standards for Imposing Lawyer Sanctions ... 9.2 and 9.3.” Id. The Decision confirms the deposition’s function: the PDJ “conditioned Mr. Gagic’s ability to testify at the April 15, 2026 Aggravation and Mitigation Hearing to his good faith participation in a deposition with the State Bar on April 10, 2026.” Decision at 2. Nothing remained for that examination to establish about whether I had violated any rule.

I stated my reason for refusing it before it was ordered. In my March 31, 2026 Opposition I wrote that “the State Bar has no legitimate reason to depose me other than to set up a perjury trap so that Rachel Mitchell can silence me with a criminal prosecution.” Opposition at 7. Phoenix Police had referred a criminal investigation of me, arising from the same posts charged in Count One, first to MCAO and then to the Arizona Attorney General’s Office. See Statement of Facts, above. A sworn examination by the prosecuting authority, about conduct already under criminal referral, in a proceeding whose liability phase had just been closed by default, carried the pretext of criminal exposure and no remaining disciplinary purpose.

The April 8 order set its own consequence for that refusal: failure to participate in good faith “will cause the PDJ to find that Mr. Gagic has waived his right to testify at the Aggravation and Mitigation hearing.” FCMC Order at 4. The consequence was applied, and it was total. That same order had already barred me from calling “any witnesses, other than Mr. Gagic, for aggravation and mitigation proceedings.” Id. So when I declined the deposition, the last evidentiary avenue closed behind me: no witnesses, and now no testimony of my own. Nothing was left but argument.

The Panel then disposed of my mitigation case in these words: my argument “was difficult to follow and was not supported by reasonable evidence. Therefore, the Panel does not find any mitigating factors from the record.” Decision at 32.

Both halves of that sentence describe the proceeding the orders below produced. The evidence was missing because those orders had removed every means of supplying it — no discovery, no subpoenas, no disclosure, no witnesses, and no testimony of my own. Yet the standard the Panel applied, drawn from its own authority, requires that mitigating factors be “supported by reasonable evidence.” I was held to an evidentiary requirement after being forbidden the only instruments that satisfy it.

All I had left was argument that I had to force my way into making against PDJ repeatedly trying to shut me down. The two-day evidentiary hearing had been reset to a single session, 9:30 a.m. to “no later than 12:15 p.m.” — a merits hearing on a two-count Complaint converted into an aggravation proceeding at which I could call no witness and, having declined the deposition, could not testify. FCMC Order at 4.

A tribunal that removes the pleadings, the disclosure, the discovery, the witnesses, and the testimony has removed the very structures through which a case is made coherent. Having done that, it cannot fairly use the resulting disorder to sanction me. The Panel’s own description of what it heard is entirely of the PDJ’s intended making.

E. Striking my entire Answer then defaulted the one element the State Bar would have had to prove.

The PDJ imposed the harshest sanction short of default judgment: she struck my Answer to both counts in full and deemed every allegation admitted. The Decision itself records that she had “reflected her inclination for ruling” on the dispositive motions before the conference at which she announced those rulings. Decision at 2. That included the allegation that I spoke with knowledge of falsity or reckless disregard for the truth — the element ER 8.2(a) requires, the element the First Amendment requires, and the element that retaliation evidence would have contested.

But knowledge and recklessness are questions of fact. They were never tried. They were assigned to me by default, as a penalty for missing claimed discovery deadlines.

The consequence is that I was disbarred without any tribunal ever finding that a single statement I made was false, or that I believed it was false, or that the proceeding against me was anything other than what Mitchell asked for in writing.

F. Count Two rested on the allegation that the video was altered. It was not, and I was never allowed to prove it.

Count Two charged ER 8.4(c) — conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit, or misrepresentation — on the allegation that the video I posted of a Superior Court judge had been altered. It had not. Whether it was altered is a pure question of fact — precisely the kind of question a hearing on the merits exists to resolve.

That question was never tried. The Panel’s finding of alteration rests on a comparison that never actually was done — between my posted video and “the unaltered video from the May 24, 2023 hearing.” Decision at 19 (paragraph 48). The Panel acknowledged in its own footnote that it never reviewed that hearing video, because it “was unable to identify an exhibit reflecting said video,” but that such review was “not necessary for purposes of accepting these findings of fact.” Decision at 18 n.11. It was “not necessary” only because the allegations had been deemed admitted by default when my Answer was struck.

I denied the ridiculous charge to the Panel directly, and the Decision records it: “Mr. Gagic argued to the Panel that he did not alter the video he posted on-line.” Decision at 30. I posted the video three years ago, in October 2023, before generative artificial-intelligence tools capable of fabricating realistic video were available to the public, and I have no training or skill in video editing. I could not have produced the altered video the Complaint alleged even if I had wanted to. And the State Bar’s own conduct shows it saw no concern in the charge. It did not charge the video until December 10, 2025 — more than two years later — under a file number, 25-1216, showing the matter was not even opened until 2025, after Mitchell demanded my disbarment in writing. If a posted video were so visibly altered that it justified ending a lawyer’s career, no observer would leave it unchallenged for two years. The video only became a problem when a second count was needed. Had I been given a hearing on the merits — with the original hearing footage in evidence and witnesses subject to examination — I would have proven the video was legitimate. Count Two therefore stands as a finding of dishonesty whose central factual predicate, a comparison between two videos, never happened.

G. The Panel disbarred with no Arizona case ever imposing discipline for social-media posts.

Disbarment was resolved against me by default. The retaliation defense went to the heart of it: conduct solicited by its target, in retaliation for protected speech about her own office, is not simply more of what came before.

The sanction is out of line with what Arizona imposes for comparable violations. The Blehm matter, PDJ 2023-9096, proves that conclusively. The State Bar charged Mr. Blehm under ER 8.2(a) and ER 8.4(d) — the identical rule charged against me — for a social-media post of August 12, 2023 which, in the Bar’s own words, “implied that the Arizona Supreme Court allowed itself to be controlled by the federal executive branch” and was “made in reckless disregard as to its truth or falsity.” Amended Complaint, PDJ 2023-9096, at 4 (paragraphs 19-20). That is a public accusation that this Court had surrendered its independence to the Central Intelligence Agency and the Department of Justice. On May 9, 2024, on the State Bar’s own motion, the PDJ dismissed Count Two. No discipline of any kind followed from it.

Set his case beside my case. The State Bar charged ER 8.2(a) for a social-media post accusing this Court of taking direction from federal intelligence and law-enforcement agencies, and then abandoned the charge. It charged ER 8.2(a) for my social-media posts about an elected county prosecutor, and obtained my disbarment. The institution that decides which lawyers to charge, which charges to press, and which to let go, is the same institution in both.

David Stringer is the closer comparator still, because he was actually disciplined under the rule charged against me. In PDJ 2021-9109, the State Bar charged him under ER 8.2(a) for campaign materials that, in the tribunal’s words, “used the likeness of a Federal judge, and mischaracterized language from the judge’s order that had been vacated, in order to impugn the character of his opponent, who was also a public legal officer under ER 8.2(a),” and that “mischaracterized state court rulings about his opponent to suggest that state courts had determined she was dishonest.” On January 19, 2022, the order read: “IT IS THEREFORE ORDERED that Respondent, DAVID H. STRINGER, Bar No. 019604, is reprimanded for his conduct in violation of the Arizona Rules of Professional Conduct.” In re Stringer, PDJ 2021-9109 (Jan. 19, 2022). The same rule. Knowingly false statements about a sitting federal judge and about a public legal officer. A reprimand — the lowest sanction this system imposes. My posts about a county prosecutor drew the highest one it has.

Nor did it end there. On August 5, 2025, Representative Quang Nguyen, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, publicly asked the State Bar to discipline Mr. Stringer for publishing racist cartoons targeting him, stating that Mr. Stringer’s “conduct impugns the integrity of the legal profession.” A year later I am aware of no discipline that has followed. A sitting legislator asked this system to act on racist publications aimed at him, and it did nothing. An elected prosecutor asked this system to act on criticism aimed at her, and it took my license.

There is a more basic problem with this proceeding. No Arizona decision, before this one, imposing discipline on a lawyer for statements made on a personal social-media account, and the Decision cites none. The one time the State Bar charged a lawyer under ER 8.2(a) for a social-media post, it moved to dismiss the count. See Blehm, supra. I was not merely disciplined for posting. I was disbarred for it, on the first occasion this Court’s disciplinary system has ever imposed any sanction for it at all.

The State Bar cited no Arizona case in which any lawyer had been sanctioned for social-media posts, and none imposing disbarment for speech about a public official. The Panel cited none either. Its sanction analysis invokes Arizona authority only for general propositions — the purposes of the discipline system, the ABA Standards framework, the definition of a knowing mental state, and the handling of aggravating factors. See Decision at 24-32 (citing In re Scholl, In re Murray, In re Alcorn, In re Witt, In re White-Steiner, In re Abrams, and In re Moak). Not one concerns a lawyer’s social-media posts. Not one is offered as a comparator. Rule 58(k), Ariz. R. Sup. Ct., contemplates a proportionality analysis, and the Panel expressly acknowledged it. Decision at 24. But no proportionality analysis appears, because neither the State Bar nor the Panel offered a single case to measure this sanction against. That is because I have been singled out for retaliation.

That is not a technical omission. It removes the only innocent explanation available to the State Bar. When a lawyer is disbarred, the ordinary answer to “why this sanction” is that precedent required it. Here there is no precedent, and the two parties in the best position to produce it — the prosecuting authority and the tribunal — produced nothing. A tribunal writing on a blank slate reached past reprimand, past probation, past every grade of suspension, and took the maximum. For political speech.

A disbarment is supposed to be proportionate to something. Mine is proportionate to nothing in the Arizona disciplinary record. It is proportionate only to what Mitchell asked for.

I do not present these comparators to bargain for a lesser sanction; I ask for none. They are here because they prove the outcome below was not produced by Arizona sanctions law — nothing in that law produces this result. An order produced by something other than law is not entitled to adjustment by degree. It is entitled to vacatur, and the Complaint that produced it to dismissal.

Set the two halves of this record side by side. Mr. Gingras: subpoenas issued, objections weighed one by one, an invitation to try again, first-impression briefing, and a case now held in suspension while this Court decides the question. Me: seven subpoena requests, zero granted, on a rule the State Bar had invoked three weeks earlier to get its own; the complainant’s deposition vacated on grounds no party raised; an anti-SLAPP motion denied for a missing affidavit and never revisited; an Answer struck in full; the maximum sanction, entered without a merits hearing. One judge. One statute. One rule of professional conduct. One kind of speech about one kind of official.

The difference between our cases is not in the rules. It is that the official who complained about me runs the largest prosecutor’s office in this state, and she put in writing that I “need[] to be disbarred” for criticizing her on X. She got precisely that. Every ruling that stood between her request and that result went against me, several on grounds nobody had argued, and not one order below offers a reason why my case had to be handled differently from every other. That is what being singled out looks like in a record.

H. The only remedy consistent with this record is vacatur of the Decision and Order and dismissal of the Complaint in its entirety.

And as I documented extensively in pleadings and the hearing, not just Blehm, but Alex Kolodin, Sheree Wright, Kris Mayes, Dennis Wilinchek, convicted pederast and pedophile apologist David Stringer (“don’t want to demonize it,” “part of the experience,” “I like being a daddy figure when little girls sit on my lap,” and publicly claims falsely he was never convicted, has no criminal record, and it was a “false arrest”), Tom Ryan (altered image of Anthony Kern), John Thaler (Arizona run by Mexican mafia via bogus real estate deeds), etc. all get to say whatever, literally whatever they want, with ZERO repercussions no matter how blatantly false and inflammatory. But I get disbarred. Why?

This Court should vacate the Decision and Order and dismiss the Complaint. I request no other relief, and I ask this Court to grant none. Dismissal is the remedy Arizona’s anti-SLAPP statute exists to provide. A.R.S. § 12-751 terminates proceedings substantially motivated by retaliation for protected speech; it does not schedule them for a second attempt.

A remand would misconceive what went wrong below. The State Bar was not denied an opportunity to prove its case; it declined to even try and obtained judgment by default instead, which was the plan all along. The PDJ was not missing information; I placed the Blehm and Gingras subpoenas in front of her, and no order below acknowledges they exist. The defects in this record are not gaps a second proceeding could fill. They are choices. The institution that made them should not receive this case back to make them again — and I should not be returned, for a third proceeding, to the forum whose conduct is the subject of this appeal. Twenty-two months of investigation, suspension, and immediate disbarment for protected speech is not a process that miscarried once and deserves another run. The process has been the punishment. The only order that ends the retaliation is the order dismissing the Complaint.

Conclusion

The elected Maricopa County Attorney put in writing that a lawyer she had never met, who had never appeared before her, “needs to be disbarred” for criticizing her on X. Twenty-two months later he was. He never got a hearing on whether anything he said was false, and he never got a hearing on why she wanted him gone. No Arizona lawyer had been disciplined for social-media posts before him. Another lawyer raising the identical defense before the identical judge was still being given merits briefing on it the day after he was disbarred. A disciplinary system in which the complaining official’s written request, the prosecuting authority’s charging choices, and the tribunal’s every contested ruling all point in one direction — and in which the respondent is denied every tool for asking why — is not adjudication. It is a dystopian ratification. This Court has the exclusive power to say whether that is how attorney discipline works in Arizona. So vacate the Decision and Order Imposing Sanctions filed May 14, 2026, and dismiss the Complaint in its entirety. I seek no alternative relief. A remand would return this case to the process that produced it, and hand the institution that refused to hear me a second opportunity to reach the same result. Dismissal ends it.

Certificate of Compliance

Pursuant to Rule 59(h), Ariz. R. Sup. Ct., I certify that this brief uses a proportionately spaced font (Times New Roman, 14-point) and contains approximately 10,009 words, excluding the caption, table of contents, table of authorities, signature block, and certificates, as counted by the word-processing system used to prepare it, and therefore complies with Rule 59(h)’s 10,500-word limit for briefs prepared in a proportionately spaced typeface. The alternative 30-page limit in Rule 59(h) applies only to briefs prepared in monospaced typeface and is not applicable here.

8.11.26

Vladimir Gagic

Certificate of Service

I certify that on 8.11.2026, I filed the foregoing with the Clerk of the Supreme Court of Arizona and served a copy by email on:

Craig D. Henley, Senior Bar Counsel, State Bar of Arizona — [email protected]

Office of the Presiding Disciplinary Judge — [email protected]

Vladimir Gagic